Sushil Karwa and Sasmita Panda, McAfee
To improve the end user software experience, one must identify better means of assessing quality quickly in the Software Development Lifecycle.
Test automation so far has been perceived as something that can cater to our regression or smoke tests and, if time permits, to functional tests. How often have you been challenged with such an approach? How often have you thought of complementing this with white box driven automation approach? In this paper, we propose to bring innovation to this age-old approach of test automation. This paper substantiates its ideas with real case implementations from the projects where the concepts are applied. This experience helps us conclude that a test automation strategy that includes both white box and black box automation techniques can streamline the achievement of more effective and efficient testing.
This paper talks about various white box automation ideas that can be implemented across the different stages of the software development life cycle that complement the black box automation efforts. Some novel ways of white box testing and how it can be automated are also discussed. It describes when white box automation can be more effective and essential than black box automation.
In the current complex software environment, maintaining black box automation scripts can become a very cumbersome job with the frequency of changes to the application under test. Since there is no direct API call involved, UI changes can make black box automated test scripts fragile. This paper does not insist on replacing black box automation completely, rather it proposes to complement them with white box test automation.
Another important aspect of test automation is functional validation and verification. Employing the right approach for automating the validation and verification step as part of test automation is critical and will also be discussed in this paper.
The concepts shared are exemplified using our observations and the practices and processes we adopted to achieve more out of our white box automation. Finally, we share our learning while implementing white box automation.
Key Takeaways:
- Shortcomings of black box automation
- How to take test automation upstream in SDLC
- How white box automation can fill in gaps in your overall automation strategy
- White box automation strategy
- Case studies and experience sharing
- Challenges while implementing white box automation and how to overcome them
2010 Technical Paper, Sushil Karwa and Sasmita Panda, Abstract, Paper, Slides
